Where America Is Moving

The press is often transfixed by population growth rates which tend to be very high in places starting from a low base, but I looked at the new Census data on population growth by country and you see that the places that are adding people the fastest are often counties where a lot of people already lived:
Maricopa County is Phoenix, Harris County is Houston, Riverside and San Bernardino are kind of far-flung suburbs of LA, Clark County is Los Vegas, Tarrant is Fort Worth, Collin is Dallas suburbs, Wake is Raleigh, and Bexar is San Antonio.
Obviously lots of folks moving to the Southwest, lots of folks moving to the US from Latin America, etc.
The problem here is that none of these are particularly good places for people to find economic opportunity. People come from Mexico to the US because the US is richer than Mexico and offers more job opportunities. By the same token, the best job opportunities in America should be found in-or-near our richest metropolitan areas. But the top ten metro areas are DC, San Francisco, Anchorage, Minneapolis, Boston, Hartford, Atlanta, Honolulu, Rochester, and Denver. The Raleigh/Durham/Cary metro area comes it at number 18—the highest rank of any metro area containing one of our top ten counties. Phoenix is 59th in household income. Greater Los Angeles is about ten percent poorer than Greater New York, but it contains three high-growth counties to New York’s zero.
This is in part about the weather but it’s largely about housing policy. People are moving to places that make it relatively cheap and easy to build houses.

Wikimedia CommonsThe lack of affordable homes is quickly becoming the next housing crisis, especially in cities in the West where the combination of too many buyers and not enough homes is pushing prices to unaffordable levels.

Traffic congestion nationally reached a new peak last year and is greater than ever before, according to a report by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and INRIX Inc. Their analysis is based on federal data on the number of cars on the road and on traffic speed data collected by INRIX on 1.3 million miles of urban streets and highways.The following are urban areas ranked by the average annual extra hours commuters spend in their cars due to delay, together with the cost in lost time and fuel.1. Washington, D.C.-Virginia-Maryland, 82 hours, $1,834

At 4.1%, the US unemployment rate is at its lowest level in two decades. Still, as underemployment and stagnant wages erode consumers' buying power, an employee's ability to score a well-paying job today depends in part on their willingness to relocate.
To help those on the job market find the cities best for them, Adobo analyzed the data and create easy-to-read guides to the career opportunities available in each of the country's top 50 metro areas.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - If you're weary of watching the stock and bond market get dyspepsia over the Federal Reserve's possible pullback of its easy money policy, turn your gaze to the U.S. home market. Rising interest rates could be a catalyst to boost sales and prices.

New Statistics Canada data has found that the cities of Windsor, Ont. and Sherbrooke, Que. have the highest amount of people living in “low-income” neighbourhoods.
The latest estimates from the federal statistical agency’s 2011 National Household Survey found that 4.8 million Canadians — or 14.9% of the population — lived in households that brought home a total income less than $19,460 per person.

Even while it’s being sued by all the major broadcast networks, video-streaming service Aereo continues to expand into new markets with the announcement today of launch dates for customers in the Miami, Houston, and Dallas/Ft. Worth areas.

Timothy B. Lee -- Writer with Ars Technica and the Cato Institute The most important policy debates are often the ones no one is having. Some issues--abortion, tax policy, health care--have been debated ad nauseum for decades. The arguments on each side are well-rehearsed, and even people who aren't very politically active often have an opinion about them.